Relatives of servicemen of the 5th Donetsk Brigade named after Zakharchenko (military unit 41698), who disappeared after the basement in Ocheretino, recorded video messages demanding the return of the military and medical assistance.
The videos that the women gave to ASTRA are addressed to Bastrykin, Putin and Belousov. Also, more than 10 relatives of the military from this unit submitted written statements and appeals to the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
“I ask you to check the military unit 41698 very carefully. My son was seconded to this unit in December.<…> He went missing on January 6, 2025, on a combat mission, and they haven’t told me any more information about him for more than two months now. <…> I have suspicions that my son is being held in a basement called the “Lazaret” [infirmary] in the area of the village of Ocheretino. The guys with serious injuries are being held there. They’re practically rotting alive. And people, their immediate commanders, receive injury payments for them,” Svetlana, the mother of one of the servicemen, said in the video.
Tamara, the wife of another serviceman from military unit 41698, told ASTRA that her husband had been in the hospital for more than three months after being wounded, and he had last contacted his wife on February 20 and had been missing ever since.
“This is the cry of the soul, the cry of the souls of many mothers, sisters, daughters, families who now do not know anything <…> about their relatives and friends who are missing. <…> We have written a lot of complaints to different authorities. But at this stage we have not received any answers,” Tamara says.
“My father is seconded to military unit 41698. The last connection was on February 10th. He has been missing since February 12, 2025. He had health problems. I ask you to find out why you sent him to storm in such a state in the first place,” the daughter of another serviceman said in the video.
“We need to figure out what’s going on with this military unit,” the mother of another missing serviceman adds in the video.
As ASTRA wrote how in Ocheretino, Donetsk region of Ukraine, which is now under the control of the Russian Federation, soldiers of the 5th Donetsk Brigade (military unit 41698) are being forcibly detained in the basement of one of the private houses (accurate geolocation is available to ASTRA). They are recognized as having voluntarily left part. One of them was sent to storm after the basement with a frostbitten foot.
Earlier, ASTRA published an investigation into the torture of Russian military commanders of 5th and 110th brigades (military units 41698 and 42600). According to the interlocutors of the editorial office, the commanders set up a real “concentration camp” on the territory of the abandoned Petrovsky mine in Donetsk. It was there that the military from the 5th Brigade tortured the American “military correspondent” Russell Bentley before his death. ASTRA published the first and only video from the premises of this mine. Men who refused to fight were tortured there, and then forced to go on deadly assaults. As reported by ASTRA, the organizer of the torture in an abandoned mine in the “DPR” was posthumously given a Hero of Russia.
The basement in Ocheretino is already the 23rd basement for holding Russian servicemen in Donbas, found ASTRA.
